


Love Is...

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:52:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mai is seven, true love finds her in the form of Azula's big brother. It's a bit cliche, falling for the crowned prince, but she falls for him nevertheless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Is...

**Author's Note:**

> Written for dawnrune at my awesome ladies meme. Because the girls are awesome and I don't write about them nearly enough.

When Mai is seven, true love finds her in the form of Azula's big brother. It's a bit cliche, falling for the crowned prince, but she falls for him nevertheless. Zuko's nice in ways that Azula never is. He's kind and smart, and when the whispers reach her, that he's a disappointment, that he _didn't even start bending until he was six_ , something warm and affectionate curls in her chest.  
  
She only sees him when she's visiting Azula; half-glimpses of his robes disappearing behind columns, Princess Ursa's silhouette beside the duck pond and a slighter figure beside her. She strains to see him, squinting against the glare of the sun for one glimpse, tiptoeing away from Azula and Ty Lee in the hopes to actually _talk to him._  
  
When she finally gets the chance to talk to him, it's because Azula's figured it out. Her first meeting with him is an embarrassment for them both. And it's almost a good thing, despite the searing blush burning it's way across her face, because for just those few seconds he swept her off her feet. Maybe a bit too literally, but he'd played the part of the dashing prince almost too well. He'd been the prince charming saving the damsel from distress, the prince from all those fairytales that General Iroh was never supposed to tell them.  
  
When Zuko stomps off, yelling about the stupidity of girls, Mai feels like her heart is bleeding out to mix with the pond water soaking her robes. It's embarrassing and stupid, but she _likes_ Zuko- likes him more than Ty Lee or Azula or any of the other girls her age.  
  
.  
  
In retrospect, that's when things had probably started going wrong. Azula never played fair, and she never, ever played nice, so it wasn't all that much of a surprise to come home to an interrogation. She'd been seven, and he was nine, and it was unfair that one hint of a crush lead to her Father and Mother sitting her down to talk about marriage. It wasn't fair that after her Father had talked to her about "prospects" and why it would be a fortuitous marriage, her mother lead her away- winked at her in the hallways and giggled about the ways of seduction. She'd lead her to a tailor, and over an explanation about how to properly woo, she'd ordered Mai nine new dresses.  
  
That had probably been when the crush had slowly started to die, smashed under the lessons of how to walk properly. Withering beneath the stares from her family, the dinner conversations that always started with "So, have you spoken to Prince Zuko lately?"  
  
Her parents spent three years trying to make her the perfect lady, and she did her best not to drown.  
  
She didn't even see Zuko again until he was ten, at Fire Lord Azulon's funeral. His face was pale, drawn- his eyes shadowed. He didn't look once at the pyre, his gaze fixed steadily on the ground- occasionally migrating towards the space beside his father where Princess Ursa usually stood.  
  
Beside him, Azula _glowed._  
  
.  
  
Mai doesn't really know when she'd really started falling for Zuko. When the early crush and the bitterness had ended and the true affection had begun. She thinks that it had probably happened sometime when she'd hidden her face in her mother's shoulder- refusing to look as flesh sizzled and the smell of burnt skin, burnt hair, burnt _Zuko_ invaded her nose.  
  
She hadn't had to look. The screams had been enough.  
  
.  
  
Mai spent the years following Zuko's banishment carefully undoing all of her parent's careful training. She forgot how to pour tea properly, drowning the knowledge out with how to properly hold a knife. Burned all of her pretty dresses in a pyre behind her house when her parents were out- traded them for plain red tunics. Tunics that were only special because she could manage to hide twenty seven knives on her person at one time. She learned all the best ways to kill or incapacitate her enemies, all the lethal and non-lethal points on a body that she could bury a knife.  
  
She forgot what it was like to feel like a princess, waiting to be swept off her feet by her prince. Instead, she learned how to be the knight, because she's sure that when she sees Zuko again, he's going to be the one who needs protecting.  
  
.  
  
And of course, she'd been right.


End file.
